Monday, 14 May 2007

Jamestown

400 years ago, a group of Englishmen settled on James River and established Jamestown, the first English colony in North America. It was the beginning of a grim history of oppression, genocide and slavery as Native American tribes were systematically slaughtered and driven from their lands and African slaves were brought to the new colony to provide labour. Today, the US commemorates 400 years of settlement, but as I sit here in my apartment in New York City, a thought goes out to those millions of people who suffered and died over the course of the past 400 years so that a certain group of people could enrich itself.